Wake-up call on hospital cover

In the week when Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has made emergency funds available in a bid to prevent A&E units being overwhelmed this winter, and at a time when North Yorkshire County Council says the ageing Dales population will place its services under immense strain at a time when town hall finances are contracting, the organisation’s pragmatism is refreshing.

As a report commissioned by the RCP concludes: “Too often our most vulnerable patients – those who are old, who are frail or who have dementia – are failed by a system ill-equipped and seemingly unwilling to meet their needs.”

As this newspaper argued yesterday, there needs to be a closer correlation between hospitals and social care providers so patients can be discharged at the earliest opportunity in a bid to halt the number of so-called “bed-blockers”.

Yet it is also about ensuring that hospitals are in a position to provide proper care seven days a week; staff shortages at weekends, and at night-time, were one of the contributory factors behind the Mid Staffordshire scandal which shocked the nation.

The onus, as this latest report concludes, must be on hospitals to ensure that wards are properly staffed night and day on a 24/7 basis – it is impossible to programme the needs of patients, or car crash victims for example, so that they coincide with long-established shift patterns.

As always, the question is one of cost at a time when the NHS is being asked to make £4bn of efficiencies each year just to stand still.

With hospitals fully utilised for 365 days a year, it is now abundantly clear that shift patterns need to be altered to reflect this reality – and that a greater premium needs to be placed on the care afforded to the elderly. They deserve better. Yet, while GPs are reluctant reformers, the Government should take its lead from the forward-thinking Royal College of Physicians. The reason is this. If the status quo prevails, there is every possibility that hospitals will buckle under the strain.

Lacking authority

ON the 12th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack against the free world, and at a time when the USA and others are still contemplating military action against Syria to halt the Assad regime’s ability to deploy chemical weapons, it is beyond belief that a top United Nations investigator should be busying herself with the minutiae of the coalition’s bedroom tax.

A key element of Iain Duncan Smith’s welfare revolution, there were always going to be families who were unhappy with the introduction of a policy that will see those concerned pay a financial levy if they continue to live in a property which is too big for their current needs.

It is also correct to say that the Department of Work and Pensions did not pay sufficient attention to the practical implementation of this policy in those rural areas where there continues to be a shortage of affordable accommodation.

Yet these are domestic policy considerations. They are matters for Parliament – the Tories and Liberal Democrats appear to be resolute over the bedroom tax while Labour’s position remains non-committal.

It is not for the UN’s Raquel Rolnik to recommend the abolition of a bedroom tax when there are 50 million people living in inadequate accommodation in Brazil. She’s hardly in a position to deliver lectures when her home country has been left in the grip of protests from the poor ahead of next year’s football World Cup and 2016 Olympics.

Is it any wonder that the United Nations has been so spineless over Syria when the likes of Ms Rolnik are interfering in the running of democratically-elected governments?

If the UN was actually fulfilling the role it was designed for, the issue of military strikes would not even be on the agenda.

Raising a glass

IT will be the perfect conversation starter at the bar tonight – the continuing revival of real ale at a time when latest industry analysis shows 4,000 hostelries across the country are expected to call last orders.

This trend is illustrated by the fact that 20 new breweries from Yorkshire alone have been included in the 2014 Good Beer Guide for the first time, further proof of the importance of locally-sourced food and drink to the region’s economy.

It is illustrated by the recent fortunes of Kirkstall Brewery in Leeds. Its original site, which produced 72,000 barrels a year in its heyday, has now been converted into university accommodation.

Yet this iconic name in brewing continues, and it has now acquired the freehold to the adjacent 
Old Bridge Inn, as landlords across Yorkshire tickle the tastebuds of their more discerning regulars 
with a far greater range 
of beers.

If this means more pubs looking to offer an even more imaginative range of drinks, then everyone is likely to raise a glass in favour of real ale’s resurgence – and the thirst-quenching work of groups like Camra.